The last two times we have been up the mountain it has been cold and wintery – perfect weather for a nice big fire. Growth has slowed down significantly and the insects are hibernating. It is beautiful.
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On Saturday we added three new members to our urban farm – Jean, Hazel and Nola. Our feathered friends were rescued from a battery farm just before they would have been sent to slaughter. If you have not already been shocked by programs like Jamie Oliver’s Fowl Dinners about the factory production of chickens then hopefully some information here might convert you. The battery farm we got our hens from sends 10,000 birds to slaughter ever 3 months and unfortunately only 100 were rescued in our batch (approx 1%).
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Dad's old house, which he built of stone, mud bricks and glass bottles.

We had a very productive weekend on our property over Easter; it’s amazing what a bit of machinery can do! Steve Hart, a local farmer, came up with his tractor and did some slashing, clearing and road repairs for us. In just five hours Steve widened our driveway and built some drainage humps, and then cleared the whole area between the bamboo and Dad’s old house, pushing out the old garden. I felt quite sad thinking about all of the work dad had put into the garden, rock walls and paths hidden below 18 years of growth that we have now pushed over the edge. The site looks like a big open wound right now but I hope we can create something beautiful that Dad would be proud of. Continue reading…

[Update: this post is a bit old, but I thought we should add some photos!]

It has been so long since we have posted. In between our last posts we have bought a house and got married!

On August 28th we moved into our beautiful new home in Wynnum, a suburb of Brisbane on Moreton Bay. Our house is a Queenslander “worker’s cottage” built in 1937 (so we were told, but we haven’t found documentation of the date yet). We love the Queenslander style — raised on stumps to increase airflow (and protect from floods and termites), with wide verandahs, high ceilings, and timber floors and walls (often called “VJ” or vertical joint walls).
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It was quite deflating to see new shoots of nasty weeds sprouting where we have been working relentlessly to clear. I was reminded of Michael Pollan’s brilliant  book “The Botany of  Desire” in which he discusses the Greek mythological gods Apollo and Dionysus—Apollo symbolizes the desire for order and control, while Dionysus embodies madness and mayhem. I think the Mountain is likely to always lean toward madness, no matter how hard we try to bend it to Apollo’s rule.

We are slowly learning the names of some of these nasties, often with groans of “oh no, you have that” from the locals.   Madeira Vine, introduced from South America, grows  aerial rhizomes (which look like cat turds) from its vine and drops them to sprout new growth.  Unfortunately we didn’t know about this reproductive capability and pulled a ton of this vine down from the trees.  After seeing how rapidly new growth spread from the dropped tubers, in the future we will instead cut and poison the vines from the ground up.  To combat the already dropped rhizomes we raked up an entire top layer of mulch and burned it in a bonfire. Continue reading…

This Australia day weekend we were busy working on our property up the mountain. Since our last visit Steve Hart (the local farmer) had been up and slashed the road for us. He said it only took him 15 minutes and would cost $15 – the best 15 bucks we’ve ever spent! We could actually walk up the road this time rather than crawling on our hands and knees. It was a rainy, misty weekend and we both had a great time getting in and doing some hard physical labour. It feels like another world up there. We even participated in the annual McKellar Range work day and had a BBQ with all the old-timers.

By far the best Christmas present we got this year was our planter from Mark’s parents. It is called a four layer stacking garden and is perfect for growing plants in small spaces. In our case we have filled it with herbs and tomatoes. As soon as we returned from holidays we went to Northey Street City Farm to pick up some organic seedlings. We bought two types of cherry tomatoes, italian parsley, mint, bush and sweet basil, thyme, aloe vera, citronella (to help control the mossies), lemon grass, chili and rosemary. When we were visiting my aunt we also picked up a few cuttings and seedlings from her abundant garden including tumeric and another variety of citronella. Continue reading…

Since our last update we have been enjoying making our new home more green and trying out some of the great environmental initiatives here in Brisbane. Although we don’t have a backyard we just couldn’t bear throwing our scraps in the rubbish bin any longer so we have gone ahead and bought a Bokashi bin. A Bokashi bin is like a compost bin except that instead of decomposing your waste it ferments it using anaerobic bacteria. This is great for flats because it doesn’t smell. The QLD government is currently offering a 50% rebate for these bins along with a $200 rebate on water efficient appliances, so we have applied for both of these (we bought a water-efficient washer last month). So now with our recycling and our compost bins we will produce very little landfill waste. Through its fermentation process, the Bokashi bin also creates a great liquid plant food which we will use to get our herb garden up and running. We are hoping to give the solid waste it creates to a local farmer who we have been put in touch with through Food Connect. Continue reading…